Planes, Auschwitz, Nowa Huta, A Short Story & UK Elections.

I am on a plane, flying from Krakow to London. I have no particular reason to blog, but then, I figured it'd be good to blog for no reason like a thirty five year old housewife in Minnesota blogging about her conversation with a man in a clothes store. You know the kind. Or maybe the real reason I'm blogging is to avoid an article I'm meant to be writing for a magazine. Planes are not the time to be doing real work, especially when listening to Augustana, and talking you.

Krakow is a fascinating place. On the one hand, it's a sweet old town full of picturesque buildings and lovely people. On the other hand, it's still dealing with it's complex history. I was in Krakow for five days. I visited Auschwitz and saw the terrifying scale the Nazi's went to towards exterminating the Jewish race. I visited Nowa Huta in East Krakow, a town built by the communist government surrounding the steel mill there. Communism in Poland ended in 1989, and now-- much of the town is out of work and poor. The older folk long for things how they were, the younger people turn to crime. Everything about Nowa Huta is grey and depressing. The oppression of Communism is still present in strange ways. I was also privileged to be on this journey through Polish Communism with a guy from Belgium, who spends four months a year in Cuba. He had a lot of amazing insight into the situation there which was really eye opening!

We saw a field which was advertised by the Communist government as a holiday place with a beautiful lake with space to put up tents. The lake was a piece of propaganda magic; there was no lake. Many citizens around Poland believed there was, and even travelled there for holidays.

It's funny how people so often say, "don't worry, it's in the past." It's normally said by people with privileges, people who are not the oppressed. You might hear "Stop going on about the Holocaust, it's in the past, what has it got to do with me?" We've all come across attitudes like this. If Poland teaches you anything, it's that history is always present with us and there is a lot to learn from it.

My time is Poland came only weeks after President Lech Kaczynski was killed whilst en-route to Russia to commemorate the Katyn tragedy. I arrived after his funeral but there were many other services taking place for people who were on the plane. The pride and passion the Poles have for their nation is incredible to see. A nation invaded and oppressed by the Nazi's, followed by half a century of communistic rule... It's incredible how strong a sense of individuality you get being there. Poland is Poland, you can't mistake it for anything else.

There are still things to be answered about Katyn. Bodies to be found, acts to be accounted for and compensation sought, more than 70 years later. The disaster on the 10th of April with President Lech Kaczynski may have been a one off accident, But it feels like just another in a long line of Traumas to hit this wonderful nation. His body now lies in Wawel castle, Krakow.

I'm listening to Van Morrison and Sinead O'Connor sing 'Have I Told You Lately' I just realized; in the process of avoiding writing an article about Krakow, I've written extensively about the topic here.

I have decided to drastically alter my sleep patterns. I don't sleep well, I have no pattern--- but it's getting to the point where I realize, life isn't about lying in until 11am on a Tuesday. I am going to get up early, consistently-- and I think it will force me into having earlier nights and in the process my days will be more productive by taking control of my sleep rather than my sleep controlling me, or pulling the random crap that it often does.

Here's a short story I started but got bored of. I do this a lot. I could publish a book of single paragraph things written for no reason, for nobody to read. So here's the most recent:

The girl buried herself under a sea of tasks and problems as a way of convincing herself that life had meaning. She always wanted to believe the friendships in her life were special and that her part in others lives was profound. It was the only way she could distract herself from the fact that deep down, she knew only too well. The fact was: she was ordinary. Completely ordinary. Pains in her feet, an ache in her heart and a frown on her face; she was just like everyone else - and all she could do was reject this knowledge.

The UK elections are pissing me off. They're all bad mouthing each other and launching fresh new promises each day. It's all so ridiculous and all we can do is go along for the ride and vote for whomever seems the least fake come the end. I'm still planning to vote for Jed Bartlet.

Okay, time to stop writing. And here's one more picture from Krakow.

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Visiting Oscar Schindler's Factory

Oscar Schindler's factory is difficult to find and pretty much in the middle of nowhere.


We got there, and it was completely closed. Apparently they are doing some preservation/rebuilding work.




However, I am not one to let a few fences and pinned up notices stop me from doing what I feel I have a right to do: explore history. So I did a small piece of trespassing, and took these pictures.







What I'm looking at, I don't really know. Had I not known that this was Schindler's factory, I wouldn't have even had a second glance at it.



Anyways, this is the famous Schindler factory as it looks today, at least in the eyes of a trespassing iPhone.

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I will be scrapping the Google Follow function on this site soon and introducing an email subscription service instead. However, in terms of communication between readers and contributors (i.e guest writers, other bloggers), the page is becoming a great way to keep in touch.

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Reflecting On Auschwitz

I am currently in Kazimierz, the Jewish District in Krakow. Except there aren't really any Jews here anymore, because they are all dead. Prior to World War 2 there were 2.7 million Jews in Poland. After the war, there were 75,000. 98% of the Jewish population of Poland were killed.


It's very easy to label it as something that happened to 'The Jews', because of 'Those Nazi's' -- it's far less comfortable to realize, they were both ordinary humans on both sides. Over 7000 people worked at Auschwitz. That's 7000 people who were implicit in the killings. Less than a thousand of those stood trial after the war. 6000 of them got away with their crimes, and many of them are probably still alive today. God may deal with them further down the line. If not, they've gone unpunished and they are free to do as they please.

Auschwitz is a strange place to visit. Weirdly, it's surprisingly unemotional. You stroll around; seeing unimaginably horrific things; gas chambers, thousands of dead people's shoes, little children's clothes, etc--- but it doesn't quite hit you in the emotional way you might expect. At least, this is how it has been for me and the various people I have visited the camps with. It's impossible to fathom the grand scale of what took place. The main emotion I feel walking around Auschwitz is one of bemusement. One of 'Jesus--- this place is so fucking big! How??? How can people do this?'


Auschwitz-Birkenau is the second part of Auschwitz. Built mid-war with the sole purpose of mass extermination. Thousands would arrive by train and most of them would be transported directly to the gas chambers. When I watch movies and documentaries about these events, it's emotional-- you get the haunting music and close ups. But actually at the site, i feel more of a general bewilderment. All that's left are bricks and rubble and barbed wire--- on a giant scale. An incredibly giant scale. And it makes no sense-- that what happened could have happened. The bewilderment does turn into emotion, but it's one I can't explain very well.


I read in the New York Times that there's been an election in Austria in the last week. 15% of the electorate voted for a candidate who denies the Holocaust ever happened. That's 15% who happily and freely voted for her, so I'm assuming many more thought about voting for her. And this is what concerns me, about our world-- do we ever learn? is the killing of six million Jews not enough?


Despite what I'm saying, for me; it isn't really about Jews or Germans or Austrians or Jamaicans or Swedes or any particular group - the Holocaust was and is about human beings. In nearly every country in the world, bubbling just below the surface; are the seeds of another catastrophy. In the UK, we have a political group who have members who deny the Holocaust ever happened. It's disgusting but what do you do? Our tendency is to ridicule them, to find ways to make them not exist or be heard. It's like we want to fight oppression with oppression, and in the process we create more marginalized and under-represented groups, and it's those groups who get pushed to the extremes.

I find myself trying to comprehend what happened by looking more closely at myself. Who is the person inside of me who oppresses others? Could I have done what the Nazi's did? I feel there is NO WAY I could follow orders and kill others, I'd rather shoot myself or get killed. But I am also very aware that the people who committed these atrocities were just people -- people pushed to the extremes of killing on a mass scale. The incredibly large amount of people who knew about, and didn't do anything about the Holocaust is mind-boggling.


Tonight, I ate in a restaurant in Kazimierz, wondering what it should really look like here. Wondering and dreaming about the 60,000 Jews of Krakow who were closer to 1,000 by the end of World War 2. This is a part of history that continually upsets, fascinates and confuses me. And despite people moaning about how the Holocaust gets mentioned too often, I still think it's many stories and truths need to be unravelled and processed, rather than pushed over and forgotten. There are still questions to be asked, lessons to learn. By doing so, I can only hope - we will one day really learn how to love one another. Because we've tried hating for long enough.

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